Maternity and Neonatal Independent Senior Advisor

The Maternity and Neonatal Independent Senior Advocate (MNISA) is a new senior role being piloted to support women, birthing people, and families in England. This in response to the Ockenden review into maternity services at the Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital NHS Trust.
We are seeking a highly motivated individual to join Shropshire Telford and Wrekin ICB as the Maternity and Neonatal Independent Senior Advocate, to support women and families to feel heard and listened to and their concerns being acted on when there has been an adverse outcome and to influence change both for individuals and at system level. You will be independent enough to have autonomy to act for others, senior enough to be able to effectively raise issues at trust and local maternity and neonatal system (LMNS) board level and can advocate for women, birthing people, and their families.
A clinical background is not an essential criteria for this role.
This role is fixed term until 31 March 2026 as part of the national pilot.
The Maternity and Neonatal Independent Senior Advocate (MNISA), will work across Shrewsbury and Telford NHS Trust to help ensure the voices of women, birthing people and families are listened to, heard, and acted upon by their maternity and neonatal care providers when they have experienced an adverse outcome during their maternity and or neonatal care. The MNISA will focus on supporting women, birthing people, and families to navigate through complexity to help them find resolution to their concerns and open-up doors, where appropriate, for further action and response and seek change and improvements in care. They may support women, birthing people, and families through all avenues of investigation or complaint, including through NHS and non-NHS processes such as NHS complaints, NHS resolution early notification scheme, maternity and newborn safety investigations and coroner investigations. They will be available to support women, birthing people and families attending follow up meetings with clinicians where concerns about maternity and neonatal care are discussed, aiming to break down barriers to being listened to and heard.
Our Values & Behaviours
We embody compassion, respect, drive, and integrity in our unique role within the STW health and care system. We value diverse contributions, drawing on the expertise and experience of local people, staff and partners, alongside high-quality intelligence to serve our communities effectively.
The below measures help assess how effectively we foster a compassionate culture, communicate our optimism, engage with stakeholders to drive positive change, are transparent in decision making and ensure our efforts are aligned with the priorities of our communities to address health outcomes and inequalities.
Ambition
Our commitment to success is shown through supporting and trusting our people to tackle challenging tasks with integrity and creativity.
Compassion
Our shared purpose, supported by our empathetic, inclusive approach where the contributions of all are valued as we work together to reduce inequalities.
Optimism
Where our drive for improvement will be shared with clarity, enthusiasm, and openness.
Focus
Where our efforts are concentrated towards, to improve health and well being with the people of STW.
These values are measured by evidence of behaviours captured through performance appraisals, feedback from ICS partners and staff surveys and our lived experience groups. Additionally, we ensure transparency in decision-making and ethical considerations in our records, and we demonstrate the impact of lived experiences in developing and tracking plans.
Key Duties and responsibilities
- Provide leadership in ensuring the voice of the service user remains front and foremost in all referrals.
- Work with local maternity and neonatal system (LMNS) colleagues to establish mechanisms to receive and record referrals from women and families where concerns have been expressed about their maternity or neonatal care.
- Respond to referrals and be available to women, birthing people, and families at follow up meetings with clinicians if required.
- Build an understanding of the concerns expressed by women, birthing people and families and reflect that understanding back to them to help them feel listened to.
- Demonstrate independence from the trust to provide confidence to women, birthing people and families that their voices will be heard
- Manage multiple, complex cases simultaneously and take decisions independently on casework.
- Establish and maintain systems to record details of each case that is referred for support.
- To act as a ‘broker’ between women, birthing people and families, clinicians, and trusts, aiming to break down barriers to being listened to and heard.
- Help women, birthing people and families navigate complexity, signposting to appropriate sources of advice and support both within and external to the NHS where necessary.
- To ensure that women, birthing